Print • Volume 63, Issue 4 - April 2011

On July 7, 2010, Los Angeles police announced the arrest of a suspect in the Grim Sleeper murders, so called because of a decade-long hiatus in killings. The break in the case came when California searched its state DNA database for a genetic profile similar, but not identical, to the killer’s. DNA is inherited in specific and predictable ways, so a partial match might indicate that a close genetic relative of the matching offender was the Grim Sleeper. California’s apparent success in the Grim Sleeper case has intensified interest in policymaking for partial matching. [...]

A criminal defense lawyer may need to read a document, test a weapon, or analyze a substance in order to advise a client. Or there may be no such need but a client may show up at a law office with an illegal weapon, contraband, or stolen property. In either event, what should a lawyer do with the item following any evaluation? What should she do if her client reveals where a weapon, contraband, or stolen property is hidden? Some cases say that a lawyer who receives or retrieves an item of real evidence must give it to the authorities after examining it. [...]

Various doctrines of contract and consumer protection law allow courts to strike down unfair contract terms. A large literature has explored the question which terms should be viewed as unfair, but a related question has never been studied systematically—what provision should replace the vacated unfair term? How should a distributively unfair contract be fixed? [...]

Forty-three times since 1954—approximately twice every three Terms—the Supreme Court has heard a case in which no party argued one side of the issue before the Court, generally because the party who prevailed in the lower court refused to defend its victory below. When faced with this unusual, nonadversary posture, the Court has tapped an attorney to brief and argue the case as an amicus curiae in support of the orphaned argument. This practice raises a number of questions: First, at the most basic descriptive level, why has it been necessary? [...]

Scholars frequently cite early nineteenth-century cases to ascertain the original meaning of the Free Exercise Clause. Previous studies, however, have ignored crucial trends in those decisions, thus leading to mistaken emphasis on the denial of religious accommodation claims. This Note argues that prevailing theological views, skepticism of courtroom declarations of religious belief, and contemporary notions of judicial deference better explain nineteenth-century cases than does a wholesale rejection of judicially enforceable religious exemptions. [...]